Thursday, March 31, 2005

Terri Schiavo Has Died

4 comments:

I have always had a cognitive dissonance with the term “death with dignity”. Although it is true that a person’s process of death begins the next instant after conception, and therefore death always follows life just as shadow always follows sunshine, is there is a dignified death as well as an undignified death?

Certainly, I have my own preferences for the time and manner I will eventually step through the portal from this life into Eternity, however, none of them I would call dignified. Regardless of the way I die, the most I could say would be that it was the best of the worst choices.

Is death dignifiable? What would be considered a dignified death versus an undignified one? To take a bullet for the President versus being a crack dealer killed in a drug bust? To die serving in your country’s armed forces versus dying next to a dumpster as a homeless person? To die by someone’s intentional dehydration and starvation versus being fed by a tube for years and minimally responding to your family, health care staff, and your surroundings?

Part of my dilemma comes from the realization that since we have absolutely no involvement with any of the decisions regarding our birth, do we have a right to have anything to do with our death? Or someone else's? God decided which of our father’s sperm would penetrate which of our mother’s eggs. God, or the obstetrician’s schedule, determines a person’s date, time and place of birth. In a person’s apparent last stages of life shouldn’t we supply at least the minimal amount of care and sustenance and let God determine the progression and time of death?

“Death with dignity” makes as much sense to me as “Murder with love”--in which case John List would be a national folk hero.

"In a person’s apparent last stages of life shouldn’t we supply at least the minimal amount of care and sustenance and let God determine the progression and time of death?"

Is not that too interfering with God? Why is it that keeping someone alive is somehow mystically aligned with god while letting them die is not? Your argument will eventually lead to an absolute rejection of medicine assuming of course you have the courage to really follow it. Some christian faiths do indeed hold with such beliefs and I grudgingly respect their consistency if not their common sense. But to hold that the treatments and practices you like are godly and the ones you don't aren't is sheer hubris.

The Reform Club, c. 1915

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